


Catch a Flame to my Sentiment

by timeladyleo



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: F/F, fem!herc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 07:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15791481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: There is a distinct void in this fandom of f/f, and so this is my contribution towards that - I present fem!hercolyn.Effectively a rewriting of Newcastle onwards.





	Catch a Flame to my Sentiment

**Author's Note:**

> There is little to no original plot in this, and it decided to get out of control inside my brain, so probably is going to end up a lot longer than originally imagined. With thanks to my-sun-my-baelish for assistance with fem!Herc's name, which is something that I had been thinking about a lot with no luck.

“Meg?” 

“Yes, short for Megara. Dad loved Greeks and aeroplanes, so this is what I got.” 

About nineteen different thoughts raced through Carolyn’s head all at the same time, but one of the ones that stuck out most of all was just how _jealous_ she was. Look at this woman! In the same position of Carolyn, more or less, but with all the smarm of every other captain, and everyone was already falling over for her! Even with a stupid name!

And how effortless she seemed, carrying her hat under her arm, brushing her hand through her droopy, mousey-brown fringe, long in contrast to the rest of her hair which was cut short. Two concurrent thoughts at this: ‘She must dye her hair’ and ‘I bet she spends ages styling that’. There were some other thoughts murmuring in the back of Carolyn’s mind, but she pushed them away before she could think them properly. That was dangerous territory, she could just sense it. 

“Have you any sisters?” 

“Yes, Hera and Callista.”

“Brothers?” 

“Ben. Dad was eccentric, but not mad.” 

Damn! She had a sense of humour. This was going from bad to worse. Carolyn refused to be charmed by this, she absolutely refused, so she set her face in a steely frown. “You’re the cabin crew, then?” Carolyn felt Meg look her up and down. 

“I am the owner and the CEO.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Martin cringe. That was more like it, that was the respect she deserved. Her crew knew very well not to make basic mistakes like this.

This memo clearly hadn’t been delivered to Meg yet. “Oh gosh, are you? Well done!” Aha! She had clearly spent too long around male captains, there was her fatal flaw. Carolyn’s smile turned wicked as she made it clear exactly whose airline MJN was, and how much she was in charge. Yes, this was better, now she had the upper hand again. See, smooth-talking, smooth-smiling, swaggering captains couldn’t get the better of her any more! 

Which was all very well, until Martin grounded them in Birmingham of all places. She had been winning that argument too! It wasn’t even an argument she felt they should be having – what part of institutionalised sexism was Meg struggling with? Surely she had faced the same issues as a pilot. But no, she was arguing as if she had never had any issue with becoming captain other than passing the tests. 

Perhaps Meg had spent so much time trying to fit in that she had lost all memory of what it was like to stick out. Which is what Carolyn would have argued next, had Martin not made up some ridiculous lie about a fire. A fire! The boy was plotting, and Carolyn had a sense that it would end badly for him. 

Carolyn quickly felt the situation slipping again as the delay dragged on, time stacking up against the plane as if it were barricading them in. Who knew what Martin was doing out there to wind up the ground crew? Whatever it was, it was working. In the part of her mind that she was trying to step on, her thoughts whispered that she was quite pleased indeed to be forced into thrashing Meg at monopoly. 

There would only be winning here, thank you very much. 

Unfortunately, monopoly with Arthur was always trying. She loved her son, but once Covent Garden was sold with no hope of making its way to him, the whole game became a sad affair as he tried his best to talk everyone into giving the property to him. It didn’t help that he always forgot to ask for his rent, and that Carolyn nor Douglas didn’t see it technically as cheating to not remind him. Meg decided to take pity on him, which meant Carolyn and Douglas started ganging up on her. This was always bad news for game enjoyment.

To try and restore board game balance, or something to that effect, Meg pointed out trivial pursuit. Carolyn dismissed the idea of teams straight away, seeing Meg and Douglas together as an unstoppable force. The exception was that Arthur wanted to be with her. Of course, anyone knew that Arthur was as much a hindrance as a help when it came to general knowledge. He was just pleased to answer one question about bears, and otherwise leave the other three to battle for superiority. 

Carolyn couldn’t help but think that a flight deck with Meg and Douglas in any order of power must have been unbearable. Hell is other people. Naturally, Carolyn agreed with this without hesitation, and it pleased her to see the flicker of confusion on Meg’s face at Arthur’s firm disagreement. Many people didn’t understand how Arthur came from Carolyn when he was so different to her, but fewer still realised how similar they were. 

“Art and lit please, Meg.” 

Only the word ‘opera’ registered in Carolyn’s head, and that was more than enough to make her eyes roll. Of course Meg liked opera. She was just the type. Mostly, it was just annoying because they all needed one more cheese, and this was Carolyn’s question and she was going to be scuppered by stupid opera! Just as she was about to win. 

“I have no use for a ridiculous story sung at me by actors who can’t act in a language I don’t speak for four and a half hours.” Carolyn nodded a fraction, pleased with herself for being right yet again. She was less pleased at Arthur’s delight at the singing. 

Of course Meg was a soprano. She was just the type.

This ended the game almost straight away, the pieces somehow getting jolted in the chaos. Somehow. Arthur was almost about to get out the jenga, which had never ended well, so Carolyn threw a panicked look at Douglas, one which said something to the effect of “Go and sort Martin out will you before this turns into a disaster?” It seemed to say it too effectively because before Douglas could even move, Meg was up to go sort it all out. 

The worst part was that Carolyn was finding it hard to despise her. She sat in the galley for the rest of the flight, avoiding everyone and hoping they’d think she was in too sour a mood to speak to. It didn’t fool Arthur, but she never could. He brewed her a tea and gave her a look that told her that he was sure she was thinking about something, even if he couldn’t quite tell what. She decided to change the subject. “Is everyone alright out there, Arthur?”

Arthur seemed to contemplate this for a second. “Yes, I think so. Linda is trying to tell Meg about all the awkward stuff Martin said about lesbians or something like that, but Meg’s mostly staring out of the window and I think not really listening.”

For a second, Carolyn wondered how in hell Martin had managed to turn his usual awkward nonsense into flirting with lesbians, but quickly decided this was a path straight to a headache. She’d had her fair share of first-hand experience with flirting with lesbians, and it was definitely a battle that Martin was going to lose. “Well, that’s the first sensible thing that woman’s done then. No-one needs be subjected to Martin’s awkward rambling, first or second hand.” Arthur nodded, his face scrunched up in the way it did when he was thinking particularly hard.

“You don’t not like her, don’t you Mum?” Carolyn blinked hard as she made sense of all the negatives in that sentence. Arthur, seeing the confusion, pressed on. “I mean, you’re doing that thing you do where you pretend to be extra grumpy to try and make other people think you don’t like them.”

After a pause, Carolyn just said “Why don’t you go and see if the pilots want coffee?” despite the fact that they were landing in ten minutes. Arthur saw the sense not to argue and knew that he was right by her avoidance of the question, so slipped away into the flight deck. Arthur was far too perceptive for his own good sometimes, and it was terrifying when he managed to guess what she was thinking even when she was trying very hard not to think it.

She was planning on slinking off without another word to anyone, but Meg managed to catch her to ask her to sign one final form. She was pretty sure it was some made up arrival thing, but she forced a smile and a cheery tone, at least satisfied at the knowledge that she had won every argument. “Lovely to meet you. Goodbye.” She turned, having put the full stop at the end of her sentence as decisively as she could. 

Still, Meg was persistent. “Carolyn?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t tell you how wrong you are about opera.” There was no force on earth that was going to persuade Carolyn Knapp-Shappey to like opera. Especially not some smarmy, deluded pilot! Especially not when the invitation to go, if you squinted, sounded like a date. Especially when Meg had written her mobile number on top of the form she’d given to Carolyn in awful, squiggly, loopy writing. 

There were, Carolyn thought, three options. Say no, and never see her again. Say yes, and hate every second of awful singers dancing badly. Or… 

“I think not.” 

Meg blinked once. Seemingly, she was not used to rejection. Carolyn decided that she was inventing the flash of disappointment that she saw. “Oh.” Meg paused, then said “All right. May I ask why?”

Really? This was not how Carolyn had planned the conversation going. She too was not used to having full command of the power. Before she could think properly, she threw back “Because I hate opera, as you know.”

“Fair enough. Just a suggestion. Cheerio.” There was a definite resignation in Meg’s voice. For half a second, Carolyn imagined the satisfaction she would have at having thoroughly beaten a smug pilot and watching Meg walk away in the knowledge she had failed. For the other half, she realised her own disappointment at just letting Meg go without a fight.

Meg began to turn, and Carolyn said, sharply “What I like is walking. I often walk my dog, for instance, on Brinkley Chase near Fitton, and then sometimes I have lunch in a pub.” Their eyes locked. To any outsider, it could have been an intense competition between one person who said ‘I can keep my eyes open longest’, and another too stubborn to let them win. And Carolyn would never, ever be the first one to give in. 

“All right, then, how’s Thursday?” Meg said, finally. A smugness spread across her face, the expression equivalent of a sunrise creeping over the horizon – annoying if you looked at it directly, yet still you couldn’t look away. Carolyn steadied herself, forcing her own face into a stern neutral. 

She said, as casually as she could muster, “I’ll let you know. Bye.” She walked away without another word, resolutely not listening to any reply Meg may have given. Part of her was being a grumpy old woman who felt like she might just be getting into things that were beyond her control, and thus dangerous. 

She decided to listen to the forward-thinking young woman inside her who was free.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr at [sircarolyn](sircarolyn.tumblr.com), and chat Carolyn with me.


End file.
